Thanks for visiting LessLawn! I'm Evelyn Hadden, a national speaker and author of four gardening books, including Beautiful No-Mow Yards (Timber Press, 2012) and Hellstrip Gardening (Timber Press, 2014).

This website began as an outlet for all the thoughts stirred up by building my first garden in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Over a five-year period, I gradually replaced all but a tiny strip of lawn on that 50 by 140 foot urban lot. You can read about how building that garden enlivened my landscape and my thinking in my first book, Apprentice to a Garden.

People are drawn to gardening for various reasons, and every gardener has a somewhat unique approach. I garden for the same reason that I explore wild places: to learn how nature works. That is, to understand how natural places are organized and how they function, to learn to see the beauty in them, and to try to establish an ecologically functional community in my landscape.

My style is perhaps best termed naturalistic landscaping. It is:

• naturalistic: I like a tangle of plants and prefer long-lived, structural trees, shrubs, and wildflowers rather than large-flowered hybrids and long-blooming annual bedding plants.


• low-maintenance: I'd rather spend my energy on creating and improving than on frequent, regular maintenance chores.


• do-it-yourself: I enjoy doing the work myself, even though I rarely get it "right" the first time.


• chemical-free: Good smells and tastes are even more important to me than neat looks. I take pleasure in a certain amount of time spent digging out weeds, and I also count many "weedlike" plants as friends.

These personal inclinations drive my research and writing, but it's not my intent to scorn preferences or values that differ from mine. I hope to offer useful information for gardeners with a variety of styles in a variety of regions, with a shared interest in living closer to plants and animals.

You don't have to believe as I do to be drawn to naturalistic landscaping—it's a modern style for people who prefer to spend daily time in a natural setting, and it works well for busy folks who want a garden but don't have the time or money for a more traditional one.

If you're a neat and tidy gardener, you may need to adjust your aesthetics to engage in this type of gardening. You'll have to judge for yourself if the rewards are worth the change.

Thanks for visiting this site, and happy gardening!

—Evelyn J. Hadden